The COVID-19 outbreak not only threatens human lives, but also largely affects businesses. NXPO hosted a special meeting with Thai SMEs on 12 March 2020 to discuss the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on the SMEs as part of its attempt to collect information in order to design appropriate measures to assist SMEs affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.  

Representatives from businesses – covering tourism, agriculture, livestock, electric vehicle and consumer product sectors – participated in the meeting. They revealed that domestic consumption has dropped drastically, resulting in SMEs running out of working capital which will subsequently create a domino effect to large enterprises. Though demand for herbal and medical products is rising, businesses are struggling to meet the demand due to the difficulty in importing raw materials and ingredients, mostly from China. Shortage of product containers and packaging has also been experienced across all industries due to the demand surge of such items in the hand sanitizer business. Some business operators are concerned that if their factories have to be temporarily closed down -in the case of a factory worker getting infected- then they will not be able to sustain their businesses because the manufacturing process has to be suspended for a certain period. 

SMEs representatives opined that they would like to see some assistance provided by the Government in the forms of corporate tax cut, training on logistics and inventory management, developing new tools for digital marketing, various funding schemes to help businesses adopting new technologies to improve their products and business operation. 

Dr. Kitipong Promwong, NXPO President, provided information on some existing programs that Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI) has been implementing, both capacity building and financial assistance, which can be expanded to help SMEs during this difficult time. In addition to this special meeting, NXPO is conducting an online survey to collect information on the impact of COVID-19 on Thai SMEs.  Information from this meeting and the online survey will be analyzed and proper measures, both short-term measures to assist SMEs affected by the outbreak and long-term measures for SMEs to weather through future uncertainties and disasters, will be designed and proposed to MHESI executives. 

SMEs are welcome to take the online survey at: https://www.nxpo.or.th/SME-COVID-19.